A surgical treatment procedure for a bone fracture occurring in an arm, a leg, a pelvis, or the like includes the reduction and fixation of bone fragments. The fixation of bone fragments is the process of continuously applying force for a long time in order to maintain the reduced state of a broken bone, and is thus a process which is considerably burdensome for a surgeon.
Meanwhile, although the reduction of bone fragments is performed through the assistance of a computer, the registration between medical images and the alignment of twisted fragments are still complex and difficult to handle.
A typical method is to match and align the proximal and distal parts of a broken bone by using a real-time fluoroscopic image. Although this method has been computerized to a considerable extent due to the development of modality capable of acquiring a medical image recently, the decision of a doctor, i.e., an expert, plays an important role.
An example of a computer assistance method for the reduction of a fracture is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 7,618,419 entitled “METHOD AND SYSTEM OF COMPUTER ASSISTANCE FOR THE REDUCTION OF A FRACTURE.”
This prior art is advantageous in that it can be applied to non-radiographic images, such as ultrasonic images. The prior art proposes a technique of generating a mirror image of an unbroken bone and then using the mirror image as a reference during the reduction of a broken bone.
Although the prior art can improve the process of dislocation efficiently because the proximal and distal parts of the broken bone can be registered based on the mirror image of the unbroken bone, the prior art is still problematic in that the efficiency of the alignment of orientations is low.